


Come on and Hold Me Still

by AidaRonan



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bands, Artist Steve Rogers, Asthmatic Steve Rogers, Blow Jobs, Casual drinking, Dacryphilia, Dom/sub, Drummer Steve Rogers, Gratuitous nostalgia, Halloween, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mosh Pits, Nerd Bucky Barnes, Nipple Piercings, Praise Kink, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Some mentions of blood because Steve is a scrappy little punk, Tattooed Steve Rogers, drool, gagging, meet ugly, spit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-14
Updated: 2020-09-14
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:13:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26455447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AidaRonan/pseuds/AidaRonan
Summary: Bucky is seventeen when a skinny drummer with blond hair helps confirm something he has only suspected, the world rewriting itself while Bucky stands in the middle of a mosh pit in Ohio. After the show, Bucky can't bring himself to say anything. Or to interact with the band at all.Seven years later, Steve Rogers barrels into Bucky's path, fists swinging. They are in Brooklyn, and there's a very slim likelihood that this is the same guy from all those years and miles ago.Even so, Bucky can't just walk away.(Featuring a meet ugly, scrappy no-serum Steve, just so many pairs of skinny jeans, and more mosh pits than you can shake a (drum)stick at.)
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes & Rebecca Barnes Proctor, James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 64
Kudos: 317
Collections: Fandom Trumps Hate 2020





	Come on and Hold Me Still

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jesuisgrace](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jesuisgrace/gifts).



> For Grace. Thank you for bidding on me in FTH and for being Team Tattoos.

You never forget the first person who breaks you. Bucky is seventeen, music pulsing like a heartbeat for the way it rattles his ribcage. He is a drop in an ocean of bodies—thousands of tons of pressure from all directions. It flows in currents and waves and eddies, its own language spoken only in screams and in the hanging humidity of sweat and breath and spilled beer.

Bucky is caught in a pre-storm swell when he sees him. Skinny jeans hug skinny legs that end in Vans that were likely once plain canvas but are now covered in whirls of color Bucky can’t distinguish from a distance. The ripped armpits of a tank top hang low enough to show rib bones and miles of pale skin. Light blond hair catches the shitty lights of the shitty venue, turning it green-orange-magenta.

“Ah,” Bucky says to no one in particular. He’d have to yell to even think about being heard over the in-between music blaring from the venue speakers—too-loud 80s rock that’s discordant with the metalcore and hardcore and every other kind of -core happening on the stage, but it works because they all know the words to Queen and Styx and Journey anyway.

Bucky stares because he can get away with it, because he is looking at this boy and coming to terms with something he has only thought might be true. Because he finally understands the true definition of the word “want.”

The blond boy sits down and plays two beats on the kick drum. He follows them with a rapid string like too-fast heartbeats. The 80s music dies and something in Bucky comes flaring to life.

Later, when he drives his rattling car too many miles home and collapses in his bed, he’ll wish he’d had the nerve to talk to the band after, when they stood by their merch table with homemade tee shirts and hand-labeled CDs.

Later still, he’ll stare bleary-eyed at the cinderblock wall of his math classroom and think, no, sometimes things are too sacred to risk ruining them by getting too close.

* * *

“When did you know?” Through hundreds of miles of towers and wires, Rebecca’s voice sounds so small coming through the phone speaker.

Bucky still doesn’t know why he waited until he left for college to tell his family that he is gay. His mother is openly bisexual and his father has never said anything even accidentally homophobic. Maybe it was just that if he had told them, he would have felt like he had to tell everyone else. Maybe it was knowing the way girls in and out of the local scene had revolved around him, the way guys in the local scene had looked at him like some kind of god because of the former.

It wasn’t that he had liked the attention. It was more that he hadn’t wanted to let anyone down after so many years of them thinking he was someone else. College had been a fresh start, a chance to build a new reputation from the ground up, to control expectations so he didn’t fuck them up. And he had done that—four years of undergrad in Austin, another year (so far) of grad school in Brooklyn.

“If you laugh, I won’t make gingerbread this year.” Bucky fidgets on his bed, tossing a small rubber ball at the wall again and again.

“Harsh.”

Bucky catches the ball, inhales through his nose.

“There was this drummer…” He runs through it all, through a thousand realizations had in the center of a writhing mosh pit.

“And you don’t even know the name of the band?” Becca asks.

“They were locals, no backdrop or logo on the drum kit.”

“And you were too chicken shit to go to the merch table, so you—”

“Thanks, dick. Just for that, I’m making a one batch of cookies this year instead of two.” Bucky throws the rubber ball too hard, and it sails by him and bounces off the pile of textbooks on his desk. It rolls across the floor and comes to a stop somewhere beneath his bed. He sighs and flops on the comforter. “Becca, why are you asking?”

“Because.”

“Because?”

“I don’t know. I keep thinking maybe…”

“Runs in the family, you know,” Bucky says.

“Thinking or being gay?” Becca asks.

Bucky grins. Too easy. “I think you’re proof positive that it’s not thinking.”

“Oh ha ha.”

A beat of silence. Bucky leans over the side of his bed and peers into the mass of storage totes and empty boxes beneath.

“Her name is Nadia. She’s in English 101 with me. She, uh,” Becca sighs, “she’s really tall.”

Bucky snorts.

“Fuck you, I’m baring my soul here.”

“Uh-huh.” Bucky rights himself on his bed and plays with the frayed denim around one of the many holes in his jeans. “Look. I’m not some sage old queer with all the answers, but I think it’s okay to be confused for a while. Give yourself space to figure it out and all that. Kiss a tall girl, but never ever tell me about it or I’ll kill you. Also unless you weren’t into the guys you dated, maybe you should talk to Mom.”

“Ew.”

Bucky laughs.

“Well,” Becca says, pausing for several seconds, “as much as it pains me to say this, thanks.”

“Wait, repeat that, let me just record—”

Bucky laughs again when the line goes dead.

* * *

Bucky always ends up in places like this again eventually. No matter how much he gets caught up in classwork, it’s like all of the iron in his blood is drawn to one true north. It’s the squeal of guitars and the way the bass drops right before a breakdown. It’s being closed in by so many bodies that he can be both lost in a crowd and not alone all at once.

Here the language is all sound and movement and color. It’s windmills and collision and circles that move round and round like electrons circling a nucleus.

Some of the bands are big—favorites he’s seen a million times, spilling through the city on tour with set lists that never feel long enough. Some of the bands are small—locals with dreams, locals with hobbies, locals who think they’re one but are really the other.

In the end, all that matters is the way it all makes Bucky feel so fucking alive.

He bursts forth from the venue, his skin buzzing, his ears buzzing more. He almost doesn’t hear the scuffle, maybe only hears it because the body flying into his path forces him to pay attention.

Bucky stops and stares down at the small blond man on the ground and his heart stops for just a moment before the guy hauls himself back to his feet. There’s blood oozing from his nose and lip, his blond hair a washed-out orange from the nearby street lamp. He raises his fists again and sways on his feet, glaring down the alley. Bucky turns his head, finds a stocky white guy with dyed-black bangs sweeping sideways over his forehead.

“Bro, just stay down.”

“I am not, in any version of reality, your fucking bro.”

It’s like watching cars crash in slow motion. Bucky doesn’t know why he does it. (Yes he does. He knows exactly why he does it.) But one second he’s tracking the collision course, and the next he’s crashing into the stocky guy, shoving him into a pile of garbage bags that line the alley.

“What the fuck, dude?”

Bucky turns back toward the blond guy. “You okay?”

All that gets him is a look of disgust and a huff before Blond Guy sets off down the sidewalk, somehow shoving his battered hands into the too-tight pockets of his too-tight jeans.

Dread and loss spread across Bucky’s gut like a stain. He should follow.

Shouldn’t.

Should.

“Hey, what the hell?” Bucky jogs to catch up.

“Oh, I’m sorry.” Blond Guy stops and turns on a dime, a movement that makes Bucky stumble in an effort to defy Newton’s first law. “Did you want me to kiss your ass for intervening when no one fucking asked you to?”

Bucky blinks at him. Bucky blinks at him some more. He recalls a night so long ago. This probably isn’t him, almost definitely isn’t him. But he can’t keep himself from looking down at the guy’s shoes. Vans. Vans covered in swirling night skies that make Bucky feel big and small all at once. And just like that, he’s pissed.

“Look pal, you were barely on your fucking feet, but next time I’ll just let you get your ass kicked all by yourself.”

“Glad we settled that, _buddy_. Good talk.”

He starts to walk away again. The Earth tilts dangerously beneath Bucky’s feet.

“Why?” Bucky asks, because it’s really the only question he has. Why here? Why now? Why didn’t I get the name of the band? Why—

The blond guy turns and glares at him, then raises an eyebrow.

“Why’d you two get into it?” Bucky asks.

“The fuck’s it to you?”

“Jesus H. Christ. Because if you shove a guy into a pile of garbage, you should probably know why.”

The guy looks like he’d rather punch Bucky than talk to him, but he answers anyway. “Because guys in this scene can be fucking shitbags. That’s why.”

“Um.”

“His name’s Cody. He’s the vocalist for Pledge Your Victory. He convinces girls who aren’t Hollywood’s idea of perfect that he’s into them, and then when they send him nudes, he shares them with his shitty friends so they can all make fun of them together.”

Bucky looks back towards the venue, his hand clenching by his side. “Christ.”

Blond Guy glances down at Bucky’s fist, then turns and takes off again. This time, Bucky lets him go.

* * *

“I made out with Nadia.”

“Ew. Bye.”

“She smells so good.”

“Bye!”

Bucky doesn’t tell her about the blond guy or the fight. He doesn’t tell her he thought for a moment that maybe…

* * *

Bucky needs to forget about the test. He needs to forget about the test and all the work he’ll have to do to make up for the test. He needs to forget about the test and the work and the other work that doesn’t have anything to do with the test. He needs to forget about the test and that by the end of next semester he’ll be expected to have an idea for either a research project or a thesis.

He takes a deep breath, gripping the edges of his desk, his nails scraping across the cheap particle board. One by one, he types in the web addresses to the venues closest to his apartment, moving in virtual concentric circles until he finds an appealing show nearby.

He looks at himself in the mirror, his deep brown hair swept across his forehead. He has on dark wash skinny jeans, black high tops, and a baby blue Underoath tee. When he heads out the door and down the stairs, his keys swing from his belt loop and jingle with every step.

There’s already a line when he gets there, but the doors are open so it moves fast, a bouncer wrapping a neon orange paper band around his wrist when he shows him his ID. Bucky usually doesn’t drink at shows. He has never understood people who can down a tall boy PBR and then run circles in a mosh pit and not puke. So at the bar, he lines up and buys one overpriced bottle of water before slipping into the already-forming crowd.

It’s a local show which means there’s no barricade. He leans against the stage, resting his arms on it and waiting. Behind him, the crowd thickens like soup, heat and anticipation building in the air. It’s already moving, people shoving through and vying for better positions.

When the first guitar notes hit, Bucky inhales and lets go.

By the third band, his shirt is plastered to him with sweat and he has migrated from the stage to somewhere in the center. He watches the second band tear down, watches the next start setting up, all the while keeping his feet planted wide against the constant ebb and flow of bodies.

“These guys any good?” someone behind him asks.

“Fucking sick, dude,” someone else answers.

This must be a universal sentiment. Bucky can always feel it when a crowd is riled for a particular band. It’s like the ions in the air before a lightning strike. The pit jostles more than usual between acts, people too keyed up to wait, their bodies already poised to thrash and run.

He is always bruised after shows, always sore in the best way—the kind of sore that comes after a good workout or great sex. A deep and pleasant ache.

He surveys the crowd around him, teeming like pond water beneath a microscope. On stage, someone kicks a drum. Bucky turns his head toward it without thinking. His next breath gets caught in his windpipe.

The blond guy is there behind the drum kit. Bucky is twenty-four at a venue in Brooklyn. Bucky is seventeen at a venue in Ohio. Time bleeds into itself, pulsing to a series of beats and crashes.

The band is phenomenal. Bucky lets the crowd have him, his heart skipping every time something tears his eyes away from the drummer, skipping again every time his vision lights on him again. The blond guy is a masterpiece of skill, his feet and arms moving like lightning, only stopping once to bring an inhaler to his mouth while his bandmates play a seamless interlude to let him catch his breath.

He is exquisite. He is art.

It somehow lasts a lifetime and is over too soon all at once. Bucky follows the stream of smokers out into the cool night air just to wash some of the heat from his skin. The band is there at their table by the time the thick, haze drives him back inside.

Bucky is seventeen and he just can’t do it.

Bucky is twenty-four and his feet carry him anyway. This time the CDs have actual jewel cases and the shirts are professionally printed and Blond Guy has realized he’s there and is staring at him with a look Bucky can’t place.

“Hey,” Bucky says, rubbing the back of his neck.

“Hey.”

Bucky fidgets and steps closer to the table, running his thumb over the plastic-wrapped edge of a jewel case. There was a time when he’d been charming. But that was a different Bucky—a half-truth of a person who was filling spaces society had chosen for him without his consent.

His eyes move from the shimmering cover of the CD down to Blond Guy’s shoes. They’re the same ones from the other night—covered in paint in a style reminiscent of Van Gogh, if Van Gogh had ever seen Hubble photographs. Bucky follows the swirling lines of blue and purple and green and thinks, _this is wonder._

He should say something, maybe compliment the shoes or the set, maybe ask if this guy has ever been to Ohio in his life. So many things he could say.

“Good drums.”

Fucking nailed it.

Bucky cringes down at the wooden table, covered in layers of stickers, some new and some old—like tree rings for the bands and fringe music styles that had passed through since the venue opened in the late 70s.

“What?”

Bucky makes himself look up and clears his throat.

“You’re really talented,” Bucky says, and he means it about the drums but also about the art. Or did Blond Guy even do the art? Maybe he bought the shoes at a local art sale or got them as a gift.

“Oh, uh, thanks.”

Bucky keeps standing there, his heart crawling its way into his throat and making a home in his esophagus, his head pulsing. He knows too much now that he’s seen him up close in the semi-decent lighting over the merch area. His eyes are an Americana blue. There’s a bump on his nose that says the fight Bucky intercepted wasn’t his first, and if he looks closely he can see the ghost of a bruise lingering under one of his eyes.

Bucky could put his lips there. He could kiss it. He could ice and rub out every hurt, because he has known this guy for all of five minutes but already knows there are sure to be more.

“Right, well, good set.” Bucky turns on his heel and makes it two steps.

“Did you want a CD?”

His keys rattle when he stops, a barely-audible clink. He turns back around. Blond Guy is standing directly under one of the lights, the yellow glow of it making him look timeless and ethereal. Bucky closes the distance again, his hand digging for his wallet.

“Yeah, I’ll take one. I’m Bucky by the way.”

Money is exchanged. Change is shoved into a cardboard box covered in large black letters that say, “Tip or we release the bees. (Not the bees!)”

Their fingers brush when he hands Bucky the CD. On the stage, the music starts anew—another band, another round of screamed vocals and squealing guitars. Bucky barely hears Blond Guy when he says, “Steve.”

Steve.

 _Steve_.

It plays over and over in his head through the rest of the show, through legs kicked high and people falling from above, souls trusting the pit to guide them safely back to Earth. It plays over and over on his walk home. With cool air and a shirt soaked with sweat, he’s shivering by the time he gets to his building.

Upstairs, he strips and lets the warmth of a shower beat against the chill and some of the blissful ache already taking hold in his muscles. He looks at the CD sitting on the corner of his desk, then crawls into bed and sleeps like the dead.

* * *

“I think I’m gonna bring her home for Thanksgiving break.”

“Okay. She knows we don’t do Thanksgiving, right?”

“She’s not American, so…” Becca sounds happy, and Bucky smiles, safe in the knowledge that she can’t see him do it. She rattles on. “But campus is closing and the dining hall is doing take-out only and it’s all gonna be terrible. She doesn’t deserve a long weekend of dry chicken nuggets and soggy fries. No one deserves that, Bucky. Not even you.”

“Wow, thank you. That means a lot to me.” Bucky fiddles with the wrap on the jewel case. Over a week, and he still hasn’t opened it. He doesn’t know why. He really did like the band and really would like to hear them again. He shifts it to the side again, relegating it to the back corner next to a chipped coffee mug full of pens and pencils.

“Anything new in your life?” Becca asks.

Steve. His name is Steve.

“Nope.”

“Good talk.”

* * *

Bucky needs caffeine if he wants to get through the hours of studying ahead of him. And snacks. So many snacks. He doesn’t bother changing out of his pajamas, sliding on his high tops and an oversized Thursday hoodie.

There are two cats living at the bodega around the corner. On his first visit, the store owner had told him in a heavy accent that their names were Pepper and Paprika. On Bucky’s initial pass through the store, he finds Pepper’s slight black-and-white body tucked into a display of Doritos and gently rubs her under the chin, smiling when he feels the vibration of a purr against his fingers.

Paprika eyes him warily from atop the drink cooler, tail swishing while Bucky pulls out two Monsters.

“Hey, buddy,” Bucky says softly, and the smushed-face ginger leaps from the cooler onto a stack of empty crates before disappearing behind the ATM.

“Yeah, me too.”

Outside of the store, Bucky cracks one of the energy drinks and sips it while he walks toward his building. He’s nearly there when he hears a grunt and a crash, his head whipping toward the alley.

“Oh, you’ve gotta be shitting me.”

Because it’s Steve. It’s Steve getting to his feet again even though his face is covered in blood. He sways two steps and crashes into the dumpster, but he doesn’t fall, and he keeps his fists up even while his opponent laughs.

Steve spits a line of blood onto the asphalt. “I can do this all day.”

This time, Bucky isn’t fast enough. The white guy Steve is fighting swings hard, and Steve goes down cold. And then the guy draws back his foot.

“Hey shit-for-face!” The guy’s head shoots his direction. He’s not a scene guy—or it’s highly unlikely that he’s a scene guy. He’s got a square buzz cut, straight leg jeans, tennis shoes. He narrows his eyes at Bucky and sizes him up. Bucky gets in his face quick, bag of purchases still hanging from his arm. “Pick on somebody your own size.”

“Or what?”

The thing about mosh pits is that there’s an unspoken rule that you don’t hurt anyone on purpose. But that doesn’t mean Bucky hasn’t gotten hurt. He has taken boots to the face, gotten in the way of dudes carried away with their windmilling, been shoved and stepped on and pressed against barriers so hard that he could barely move after. He has also learned how to hold his ground even when the world is pure chaos. Bucky has never thrown a real punch, but it’s effortless to toss a half-empty Monster at this guy’s face and them push him hard enough that he barrels into the dumpster before crashing to the ground.

It’s enough. Buzz Cut gets up and takes off, throwing curses over his shoulder.

“Steve?” Bucky nudges him, trying to remember what he knows about being knocked unconscious. It’s not good if they don’t wake up pretty quick. He knows that. He nudges Steve again and exhales his relief when Steve blinks up at him.

“Ow, fuck.” Steve presses a palm to his forehead and grimaces. Bucky carefully helps him to his feet, grimacing too at the amount of blood. Steve has a split lip again, plus a gash in his forehead that is spilling red all down the side of his face.

“Come on. I live around the corner.”

Steve lets him lead him, following him zombie-like up the stairs and through the door. Bucky dumps his purchases on his bed and shoves Steve into his desk chair. In the bathroom, he grabs his first aid kit—a cheap plastic pencil box filled with alcohol wipes, antibiotic ointment, and bandages. He wets a rag with warm water.

“Didn’t even open it, huh? Ouch.” Steve has the CD, turning it over and over in hands that look delicate despite the scrapes across their knuckles.

“I’ve been busy. That’s all.” Bucky lays the first aid kid down on top of his open textbook and moves to wipe some of the blood from Steve’s face.

“I can do it,” Steve says, tossing the CD back on the desk with a lack of reverence that almost makes Bucky angry.

“I believe you.”

“I don’t need your help.”

Bucky scrubs a hand over his face and back through his hair, sighing deeply. “Christ, you’re a stubborn little punk, you know that?”

Steve glares at him immediately, sitting up straighter and making the sharp angles of his body seem dangerous. “Yet again, no one fucking asked for your divine fucking intervention.”

“Ah, yes, I forgot that I’m an asshole for not leaving people unconscious in alleyways, especially when the guy they’re fighting is about to keep right on going with or without their participation.” Bucky grips the wet rag tightly in his fist. “Super dick move on my part. I apologize.”

Steve grits his teeth, his fingers digging into the legs of his jeans until his knuckles go white hot beneath their injuries. “I know what people see when they look at me. Some sick little guy who can’t fend for himself. I can though. I can fend just fine.”

Bucky buries his face in his hand again, the pressure of his palm on his nose turning every breath into thick white noise.

“Why?” Bucky asks. Maybe because it worked last time. Maybe because he needs to know. Maybe because he is yet again asking another question entirely.

Steve doesn’t ask for clarification this time.

“He wouldn’t stop hitting on the bartender,” Steve says. “And then when she finally told him flat out that she wasn’t interested, he got even worse, started ordering drinks and then saying they weren’t right. Told her it was a dangerous neighborhood and she should be careful going home.”

“So you’re on a personal crusade to punch out every asshole in New York? You’ll have to increase your working hours. This part-time gig isn’t gonna get you there.” Bucky deflates though, and somehow Steve does too. “Just let me help. You punch bad guys. I clean up messes. We’ve all got our thing.”

“So I’m a mess now?” Steve asks, but there’s no bite in it, and when Bucky puts two fingers under his chin, Steve lets him tip his head back and pull the desk lamp closer. With gentle movements, Bucky wipes away the gore, sanitizes the wounds, and applies ointment and bandages where they’re needed. Steve doesn’t speak again until he is nearly done.

“I know I can’t fight all of them,” Steve says softly, “but I can’t do nothing either.”

“Yeah.” Bucky finishes smoothing the last bandage into place. “I got that about you.”

Steve answers that with a weak smile.

“And I do really like the music,” Bucky says. “I promise that wasn’t a lie.”

Steve nods and stands up. “I’ll get out of your hair.”

“What time does that bar close?”

“Huh?”

“The bar where she works. What time does it close?” Bucky starts unpacking his snack bag, arranging things on his desk.

“Midnight during the week.”

“I’ll go with you if you want.”

Steve gives him an inscrutable look, like Bucky is a book he hasn’t quite figured out yet but doesn’t want to put down just in case it gets good. “Yeah, okay.”

Steve hangs out until then, laying on Bucky’s bed and quietly rifling through Bucky’s books and CDs, occasionally sliding on Bucky’s big headphones and losing himself in an album, the tapping of his socked feet the only indication that he is still awake.

Somehow, miraculously, Bucky still manages to study.

Later, they slip into the bar five minutes before closing. Bucky has a whole speech prepared about how they’ll leave now if it creeps her out, but they’d like to walk her home or at least pay for a cab.

But there’s no need.

She smiles warmly at Steve and shakes her head of dark curls.

“Oh good. You’re not dead.”

“Not for lack of trying,” Bucky mumbles, apparently louder than he thought because she throws her head back and laughs, then slings a light brown arm across Steve’s shoulder.

“That’s our Steve.”

Bucky doesn’t correct her.

* * *

“Does your printer still work?”

Bucky has his flip phone in one hand, his headphones in the other, the number on his CD player blinking at him as a reminder that he paused mid-track. “I’m doing great, Becca. Thanks for asking.”

“Don’t be so dramatic, Bonky.”

“Rebecky.”

“Bucket.”

“Becksy-wecksy.”

“Ew,” she says. “So does it work?”

“Oh my test today?” Bucky sighs deeply. “It went okay. Confused one formula for another, but I won’t fail because of that.”

“Does it work? Does it work? Does it work?”

“Christ, yes. It fucking works.”

“Can you look up some Swiss recipes and print off a few that look good and bring them home?”

“Does your school not have a fucking library?” Bucky asks, wrapping the headphone cord around his wrist and fingertips like a thin black snake. He still, despite Steve having been in his apartment and bled on one of his wash rags, hasn’t opened the CD. Instead he’s replaying Slipknot’s Subliminal Verses.

“Yes, but I only get so many free pages a semester and I’m saving them.”

“Okay, well I pay for ink so?”

Rebecca goes quiet, and Bucky knows it’s coming before it happens.

“No.”

“Buckyyyyyy, Bucky, Bucky, Bucky, Bucky, Buckyyyyy…” She won’t stop. He once thought he could outlast her and she kept it going for a solid hour. He once thought he could hang up on her and she just called back and then started blowing up his texts when he didn’t answer. She has one of those phones with the keyboards. She is a relentless pest.

“Fuck. Fine.” He sighs. “But you have been reduced to one single gingerbread cookie this year for the crime of being fucking annoying.”

“Love you.”

“Love you too.” Bucky grins. “Becksy-wecksy.”

She hangs up on him. He texts her a whole wall of the nickname. It’s well worth the time it takes to type.

* * *

River of Truth has a new profile pic on MySpace—a flyer for a Halloween show complete with a cartoon zombie smashing a guitar. It’s farther away than Bucky usually goes for local shows, but the temptation is too much to resist, and he clicks the link and buys a ticket, printing it out and pinning it to his bulletin board.

The MySpace page sits open in another tab on his laptop and Bucky stares at it. He’s been trying not to creep too much, but he does click into their profile pics, sliding through them until he finds a picture of the band standing in an abandoned building. Steve has his thin arms crossed over his chest. Bucky doesn’t know the names of the others—a white woman with red lips on bass, a thin Black man on guitar, another stockier Black man on keyboard and backup vocals, and an Asian American guy for lead vox. They all stare into the camera, challenging the world to listen to them and care.

Bucky eyes the CD again, still wrapped on his desk, and resolves to get up and open it.

And then someone starts pounding on his door. He closes the laptop and peers through the peephole. It’s one of the Black men in Steve’s band, holding Steve upright.

Bucky unlocks the door and Steve rolls his head up at him, smiling. There is blood in his teeth.

“Hey Buck. Have you met Gabe?” He sounds out of it.

“Um.”

“Sorry to barge in on you,” Steve slurs, letting Gabe and Bucky guide him into the desk chair. “We were in the neighborhood.”

Bucky has not been reading up on first aid since the last time he found Steve fighting. He has not been reading up on concussions and basic care.

“Steve, what year is it?” he asks, digging through the plastic drawers in his bathroom.

“2007. I’m in your apartment in Brooklyn. The President is a warmongering bag of sentient dicks and I’m not saying his name.”

“So you’ve done this before?” Bucky asks.

“Big shocker, huh?” Gabe rolls his eyes.

“What was it this time?”

“Oh. Ran into Cody again. You remember our good friend Cody?”

“How could I forget?” Bucky dabs at a scratch on his cheek, then looks over at Gabe who is hovering awkwardly. “You can sit on the bed if you want.”

Gabe nods, then picks up the CD. “Good taste.”

“You still haven’t opened that?” Steve asks. “Bucky, I’m starting to doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion.”

“I was just about to and then some punk who can’t stay out of a fight for five minutes showed up to bleed on my stuff again. I should dedicate a wash cloth to you. I’ll tell my guests, ‘Oh no, you can’t use that one. That’s for mopping up Steve.’”

Steve grins at him, sheepish. “So you want me to come back.”

“What happened with Cody?”

“He’s pissed that I broke the bro code or whatever the fuck. I didn’t start this one.”

Bucky glances at Gabe who shrugs.

“For once, he didn’t.”

“But I finished it.” Steve grins proudly. There’s still blood in his mouth, and Bucky can’t help but think about how it would taste if he kissed him right now. Tangy. Metallic.

“He did,” Gabe confirms. “He threw Cody towards the nearest bathroom stall and he half-fell in the worst toilet in Brooklyn, and then we bailed while he was too busy coming to terms with the fact that there are some things soap can never wash off.” Gabe shudders.

Steve looks up at Bucky and smiles wider, clearly pleased with himself.

“Additional question,” Bucky says. “Is Steve drunk?”

“Oh super drunk,” Gabe says.

“Neat.”

Bucky gently runs a thumb over Steve’s bottom lip and encourages it away from his teeth. There’s nothing much he can do for the small cut there, but he does mix up a cup of salt water and then help Steve to the bathroom sink so he can rinse out his mouth. There in front of the cracked mirror, Steve leans into Bucky, resting his head on his shoulder for one fleeting moment.

His soft hair smells like soap and he’s so warm that Bucky wants to wrap up in him like a blanket.

“Thanks, Bucky.” Steve kicks off his shoes and gets into bed next to Gabe. It seems like the thing to do, so Bucky crawls in to join them—all three of them sitting there horizontally with their heads tipped back against the dry wall. Just existing and breathing while the world spins and the Earth hurtles through space at a speed that none of them can feel.

“Oh, you got a ticket to our Halloween show,” Gabe says, and Steve’s body jerks in surprise at the sound before he turns his head and finds the ticket pinned to the bulletin board amongst notes and math formulas and a reminder to print Becca’s godforsaken recipes.

“So you really do like us?” Steve asks. “Or just me?”

Bucky freezes, reality crashing around him. He’s fourteen again, at his very first concert, learning the meaning of “wall of death” while he follows the crowd as it splits right down the middle. He’s at the very front, only a little sure of what to expect when the opposing sides slam together.

Bucky recovers quickly, letting out a soft laugh. “Sure, let’s go with that.”

Silence falls again, comfortable, and Bucky realizes that he and Steve are friends and that if he wants, Gabe is probably his friend now too. This is true friendship, in Bucky’s opinion, the people you can be quiet with without feeling compelled to fill the spaces.

He opens his eyes and looks at them in the sliding mirrored doors that cover his small closet. He stifles a gasp when his eyes meet Steve’s in the glass, the two of them holding each other’s gaze. Bucky’s cheeks go hot. It’s like being an ant under a magnifying glass, the way Steve’s eyes start to burn him, Bucky’s insides boiling and bubbling the longer they stare at each other. On the bed next to him, Steve’s fingers twitch against his thigh.

“Did—” Bucky clears the hoarseness from his throat. “Did you paint your shoes?”

“Huh?” Steve blinks, the spell finally broken. “Oh, yeah.”

“I like them.”

There’s another question on the edge of Bucky’s consciousness, one that brings back memories of another time and place. But he doesn’t ask it. Instead they fall into conversation about the local scene, about Bucky’s favorites since he landed in the city, about River of Truth’s plans and hopes and dreams.

“I need to get going,” Gabe says after a long time, sliding off the bed and into a pair of checkered Vans. “But you should come out with us for beers sometime.”

Steve takes that as his cue as well, melting off Bucky’s comforter.

“Yeah.” Bucky nods. “I’d like that.”

* * *

“Is Peanut Butter and Jelly too cutesie?”

“Becca, I really don’t care.” The other day, Bucky finally made his way under his bed to retrieve his rubber ball. It bounces agains the drywall with a quiet thud. He snaps his fingers closed around it.

“Mario and Luigi? Wait, gross, they’re brothers.” Becca hums to herself.

“Becca, I cannot stress how few fucks I give about your couples Halloween costume.”

“She’s never celebrated Halloween before, Bucky.”

“Okay.”

“Well, what the fuck are you doing for Halloween?” she asks. “Are you dressing up?”

Bucky hasn’t really thought about it. He knows he’s going to Steve’s show. He couldn’t back out now that Steve knows he is going, that much is for sure. But a costume? It would have to be something that worked at a concert. Nothing bulky. Maybe he’ll do some cool makeup or something.

“I’m going to a show.”

“Way to deviate from the program, Buckaroni.”

“I will pull out Becksy-wecksy again. Do not test me.”

She sighs and answers him in the fakest customer service voice she can muster, like one of those robots that apologizes for long wait times when you call your phone company. “I’m sorry. I’m glad you’re going to do something fun even if it’s something you do all the time.”

“It’s not something I do all the time. I’m going all the way to Queens.”

He can feel her roll her eyes.

“Just don’t forget to, I don’t know, have some fun or something,” Becca says. “Sow some wild oats.”

“Sow some wild oats? Who are you, Aunt Mildred?”

“Get all the way fucked.”

“Not a conversation I want to have with you, Bex, thanks.”

“Ew. Though…”

“Bye!”

* * *

It’s the day before Halloween when Bucky realizes he’s been a colossal fucking dumbass. He realizes it when he sees a girl in a skimpy devil costume and thinks, “Good for her.”

Halloween costumes—a time honored excuse to look hotter than usual. He should’ve been planning this. He should’ve come up with something that would knock Steve’s hand-painted Vans right off his probably adorable feet.

If Steve’s into guys anyway, one part of Bucky’s brain says. The other part just reminds him of last week, of their eyes locked together in a mirror, heat pooling between them like so many mirages shimmering above desert sands.

Bucky steps into a thrift store, his hands in the pockets of his Every Time I Die hoodie. This shouldn’t be that hard. He has a list of criteria. Easy to move in. Nothing that will hold heat. The thrift store has a rack of old Halloween costumes and he starts there first.

It is very understandably picked over. There are a lot of plain robes that tie in the back in shades of black and red. There is a baby costume that might be a beetle but also might be a cockroach, which, _why_ on either of those? Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz with a hole in one side. The rack is a bust, pretty much, though Bucky does pick up a makeup kit—a multicolor wheel of grease paint. He holds it in his hand while he walks through the aisles.

The thing is that he doesn’t just want to be hot. He want’s to be hot _for Steve_. And that sucks because he doesn’t know what that means, what Steve likes, what weird little niche things get Steve’s heart racing.

Is it just skin? Did he see _Queen of the Damned_ when he was younger and want to peel off Lestat’s leather pants? Did he kind of have the hots for Indiana Jones? Pirate Orlando Bloom? Elf Orlando Bloom? Bucky presses his palm to his forehead and breathes.

Confidence. If he feels hot, hopefully Steve will agree. He picks through aisle after aisle, trying to fit things together. Then he finds the old tuxedo that somehow won’t break his food budget for the month, and it all clicks into place.

* * *

“Happy Halloween, fuckstick. Awoo!”

“Bye!”

Bucky starts to flip the phone closed then hesitates.

“Be safe and watch your fucking drinks. I love you.”

“I love you too, Buh-Buh,” Becca slurs.

* * *

It takes a good hour to get his makeup right. A brush dipped repeatedly into black paint. He strokes curves and lines over his face and heeds the Internet’s instructions to liberally coat it all with baby powder when he finally manages something resembling symmetry.

He puts on the tuxedo next, grateful now for the sewing kit that has been collecting dust in various sock drawers since freshman year of undergrad. He is no tailor, but he did manage to take the legs in enough that they hug his thighs and calves. The silk bands down the sides are a little uneven now, but he doesn’t think anyone else will notice.

It’s not until he looks in the mirror that he starts to have doubts. He makes [a pretty hot fancy skeleton](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/d3/ea/25/d3ea2567d959c6feeda42c5892b507b1.jpg), with a smile reminiscent of Jack Skellington painted over his lips, black circles around his eyes making the blue-gray color of them pop. He left his own skin beneath, going for essence over accuracy so that he one) wouldn’t sweat himself to death, and two) would look sexy rather than actually dead.

“God,” Bucky says, blinking at his reflection. Because what in the whole fuck even is a “hot fancy skeleton”? What goes on in his fucking brain sometimes?

Taunting him, the alarm on his phone goes off, Taking Back Sunday blasting tinny from the small speaker. He needs to leave. Taking a deep breath, he shoves his ticket and printed directions in his pocket.

* * *

When he gets off the train and makes it back above ground, he has a text from Becca. He smiles at a picture of her and her girlfriend as fire and ice—their dresses and makeup a mass of glitter and tulle.

He ducks under the awning of a building and takes four selfies in quick succession, shooting her the one where he actually managed to get himself (mostly) in frame, along with the caption, “Happy Halloween, Becksy-wecksy.”

He gets back “,,|,,” and nothing else.

* * *

For the first time in a very long time, Bucky hangs back out of the pit. For one, he doesn’t want to mess up his makeup before Steve sees it. For another, well… His eyes dart over to River of Truth’s merch table again, but there’s no one there except for a twitchy white guy wearing a pearl snap button-up and cat ears.

A few guitar notes drift from the stage and Bucky turns his attention their way and oh, oh fuck, oh _no_.

He had been so focused on the idea of getting a costume together that he never considered that Steve might wear one too, but there he is, standing on the edge of the stage to watch this band’s set. Bucky’s entire world teeters on a precipice. Steve is dressed as a cowboy, with brown fringed chaps slung over his jeans. He has on a vest to match. And under that vest?

The music eats Bucky’s whimper while his eyes rake over pale skin and multiple tattoos. He didn’t even know Steve had one tattoo, but his chest and ribcage are covered in ink. Where else? Where else does he have them? The stage lights glint off of something.

“Why?” Bucky asks no one, when he realizes that something is a bar that runs through one of Steve’s nipples.

Bucky has to stop looking. He has to stop looking or he’s going to melt. He’s going to sweat and sweat until his skin sloughs off his bones and he’s nothing but a puddle on the floor. He tears his eyes away and does his best to pay attention to the current band.

It’s a mercy when Gabe joins Steve and mostly blocks him from Bucky’s line of sight.

It’s a curse when, between sets, Bucky looks over and sees Steve leaning casually on River of Truth’s merch table. He looks up from his conversation with the twitchy guy and flinches when he meets Bucky’s eye. A squint, a dawning of recognition, a slight wobble of his jaw. And then Steve reaches up for his cowboy hat and casually tips it in Bucky’s direction.

“Hey.” Bucky’s voice doesn’t even pretend to hold it together when he makes it to the table, the word coming out cracked and hoarse.

“Howdy.”

Bucky’s eyes are drawn immediately to one of the tattoos on Steve’s chest, a wolf’s face done up in blacks and grays and pale blues. He must stare at it a beat too long, because when he looks back at Steve’s face, he’s got that look again like he did in the mirror, his blue eyes intense and warm. Bucky clears his throat.

“I didn’t know you had all those.”

Steve looks down, his hands gripping the edge of his vest and pulling it open wider. Bucky’s eyes find the great big tree on Steve’s rib cage, its branches stretching across so many inches of skin. Bucky’s fingers twitch by his side.

“Ma made me promise I wouldn’t get any I couldn’t cover until I had a job where it wouldn’t matter.” Steve shrugs. “I know hardly anybody cares anymore, but a promise is a promise.”

Bucky nods. Next to the tree is a river, its waters disappearing out of sight. Does it continue onto Steve’s back? Or does it end somewhere beneath the vest?

“How many more do you have?” Bucky asks.

“Wouldn’t you like to know?”

“Pal, you have no idea,” Bucky says casually, and then it’s like the entire night—the music, the loud murmur of voices yelling to be heard, the flashing lights—all comes screeching to a halt.

In front of him, Steve raises an eyebrow. Realization dawns, and Bucky’s eyes go wide within the oblong circles of black grease paint that surround them. But that’s the thing about cats and bags. Letting them out is easy. But stuffing them back in?

Bucky’s bottom lip twitches, the synapses of his brain firing off like storm clouds. A small sound escapes his throat but that’s it. Nothing.

With a smirk, Steve leans on the table again.

“Is that right?”

“Oh wow, I love this song,” Bucky says, and he turns and hauls ass back toward the mosh pit. He’s halfway there when he realizes that the band isn’t playing anymore. The venue doesn’t even do him the courtesy of playing 80s music over the speakers. “Fuck.”

Steve doesn’t follow him though. Bucky glances over once out of the corner of his eye to find Steve standing in the same spot, his eyes on Bucky with such intensity that it makes Bucky’s bones squirm under his skin. But Steve doesn’t seek Bucky out and Bucky doesn’t go back to the table. Not even after the set, after Steve pours everything into his drums and practically murders his high hats, sweat flying off of him like holy rain.

Not even then.

Bucky slinks home after, staring blankly at his reflection in the window of the subway car. His makeup is still impeccable. He hadn’t crashed into a single body even once. He’d stood a the back the entire show—a first for sure. Nothing aches except for a dull pain in his back. He didn’t want to mosh though, doesn’t regret not doing it.

There was only one body he wanted to crash into tonight and he fucking blew it.

* * *

“ _So there’s a guy, a drummer with blond hair who looks like… might be… probably isn’t…_ ” He texts Becca even though he can see how nonsensical it all looks on screen.

She’s either too drunk or too asleep or too dead-in-the-phone-battery-department to respond. Back at his apartment, Bucky finally unwraps the CD and pops it into his player. He crawls onto the foot of his bed and leans against the wall. At some point, he’ll have to get up and scrub the makeup from his face, but for now he closes his eyes and listens.

The first track begins with a drum beat.

* * *

There’s someone knocking on his door. Bucky jerks awake. The CD player has gone quiet, the track numbers replaced with two dashed lines. He is slumped over against the wall, his neck aching faintly.

“What the...?” Bucky blinks at himself in the mirrored closet doors, his face still done up in patterns of bone and teeth. The knock comes again, a quiet rat-a-tat-tat, and Bucky glances at his alarm clock. It’s four o’clock in the fucking morning. Bucky has class tomorrow, though thankfully not until the afternoon. But still.

He looks through the peephole and sucks in a breath. Steve is standing outside his door, a Rise Against hoodie thrown on over his cowboy costume, his hat on crooked. Bucky could pretend not to be here. He could. Steve doesn’t know his life.

(Okay he knows it a little.)

Taking a deep breath, Bucky undoes the chain and opens the door.

“Heya, Buck,” Steve says, and butterflies roll through Bucky’s insides like tumbleweeds. Steve’s got his hands in the pockets of the hoodie, which is long enough on his small frame to hang past his hips.

“Hey,” Bucky says. “Nice to see you here when you aren’t bleeding.”

Steve gives him a lazy smile. “You left without saying goodbye.”

“Yeah, I um…”

“There’s probably a smoother way to do this,” Steve says, pausing long enough that Bucky feels like no more words will ever come, and they’ll both just be hanging here in this moment for the rest of time.And then Steve opens his mouth, his lips wet and pink. “The thing is… I’d really like to come in and I’d really like to kiss you.”

Bucky’s heart leaps up into his throat, and he can feel his pulse point pounding there. Slowly, he moves out of his doorway so Steve can step inside.

“I listened to the CD,” Bucky says, but Steve doesn’t answer. Instead he wraps delicate fingertips around the back of Bucky’s neck and tugs him down. There’s plenty of time for Bucky to say no, and Steve’s grip is loose enough that Bucky could easily pull away. But he doesn’t want to. God, he really really doesn’t want to.

When Steve’s lips meet his, his knees almost buckle. They’re pillow soft, a wonder considering how often Bucky has seen them split open. They’re gentle and tender too, another wonder because Steve can be so biting when he wants to be.

It’s a slow progression, this meeting. Their lips brush and depart, brush and depart—like a stone skipping smoothly across the glass surface of a mountain lake. Steve trails kisses along Bucky’s jawline, featherlight. They’re making a mess of Bucky’s makeup, smears staining Steve’s face, but it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter even more when Steve gently licks into his mouth and the entire orbit of the universe shifts its center to one solitary point.

“Do you wanna stay?” Bucky asks.

“Yes.”

“I’m gonna...” Bucky gestures to his smeared makeup, and Steve nods.

After Bucky scrubs his face pink, he takes a warm cloth out to wipe away the stray marks on Steve’s lips and cheek. There are more kisses after that, the two of them lazily making out in Bucky’s bed. Bucky wants more, wants Steve’s body to find the heat uncoiling in his belly and between his legs, to take that formless heat and mold it like clay into gasps and sighs and moans.

But it’s late and he and Steve both keep nodding off, so Bucky pulls the covers up tight around them, tucks his head into the crook where Steve’s arm meets his torso, and closes his eyes.

* * *

“ _Ooh????_ ” Bucky reads the text from Becca in the morning while he’s brushing his teeth and trying not to think about the blond boy asleep in his bed. He would probably blow off class if he didn’t have a paper due. There is something very appealing about spending the whole day in bed with Steve.

He leans out of the bathroom door again, his eyes taking in Steve’s bare, tattooed chest. Steve has kicked all the covers away, a pair of too-big borrowed sweats slung across his bony hips. Bucky’s eyes trace a trail of pale blond hair until it disappears beneath cotton and elastic.

Bucky half does the math for the missing grade’s effect on his semester, half makes up an excuse ironclad enough that his professor will let him e-mail the paper instead.

But in the end, Bucky goes and gently shakes Steve awake.

“I have class. Just a couple hours. You can stay here and sleep if you want.”

Steve groans but gets up and reaches for his hoodie, glancing at the clock. “No, I have class too. Art school.” He looks around the room while rubbing his eyes, finding the pile of cowboy gear over near the desk. Then he looks down and grabs at the legs of the sweats. “Your pants.”

Bucky loops a finger through the drawstrings and reels Steve in for a soft kiss. “Consider them a loan. I’ll collect eventually.”

“Thanks.”

“But you’re keeping the outfit, right?” Bucky teases, and Steve answers him with his lips.

On the walk to class, Bucky pulls out his phone. “ _His name is Steve. He’s in art school._ ”

* * *

There is a message for Bucky on MySpace when he gets back to his apartment.

_Tomorrow at Death by Audio. 7 p.m. Send me your government name and I’ll guest list you. :)_

_719-555-1918_

They spend the next 24 hours texting and sending grainy selfies. Steve Rogers prefers oils to watercolor and acrylics. James Buchanan ‘Bucky’ Barnes is getting his master’s in chemical engineering. Steve is an orphan and an only child. Bucky has a younger sister and two parents who did their best.

“ _Becca and I had a dog growing up. Raccoon.”_

“ _You named your dog Raccoon?”_

“ _If you’d seen him, you’d understand.”_

“ _Lmao. No pets when I was younger, but when I was old enough, Ma let me start fostering. There was always something around. I still do it in the summers when I can.”_

Steve follows that with a picture of his legs, a bright white kitten spreading fur all over his black jeans.

“ _Snowball from back in July. My Ma was a nurse before she died. Maybe I got the nurturing_ _bug_ _from her.”_

Bucky almost asks Steve where she worked, but the question would be too close to the one he wants to ask, the one that sends him tumbling back through time, to a dark room and a blond boy playing a rapid tattoo.

A little before six, Bucky makes his way toward Williamsburg. The venue is a warehouse on the lower floor of a brown brick building. Near the entrance, he finds Steve holding up a wall and nursing a can of PBR. They kiss hello like it’s easy, like they’ve done it a hundred times in this life and in others. Effortless.

“You look good,” Steve says, and Bucky can’t help the way his face splits into a smile. He had spent a little more time than usual getting dressed, but he doesn’t look much different than any other show either—black skinnies, high tops, a white The Used tee. Steve is in full black except for his shoes, a Thrice tank revealing biceps that are skinny but toned.

“So do you.”

“If I ask you if you’ve ever seen a green room before, will that sound impressive?” Steve grins into the mouth of his beer.

“Oh, is that what this is? You trying to impress me?” Bucky asks. “No, I haven’t seen one. I was an embarrassing age when I realized they weren’t actually green though.”

“Some of them are green.” Steve shrugs.

“Is this one?”

“Wanna find out?”

Bucky laughs but lets Steve take his wrist, his pulse thrumming beneath Steve’s fingers while he drags him around the edges of the nebulous crowd. There are various people sitting in the green room, the walls brick on one side, plain drywall otherwise—a dingy white that definitely isn’t green. Open pizza boxes sit on a table at the center of the room.

“Bucky, you’ve met Gabe. This is Sam, Jim, and Peggy.”

Bucky waves.

“You two a thing now?” Gabe asks, and Bucky feels a flash of panic. Because what if Steve says no? What if Steve says that they’re just friends? Wh—

Steve squeezes his wrist, and Bucky looks his way. There is a question on Steve’s face, written in the furrow of his eyebrows, the tension in his shoulders.

“And I can see that you have not talked about this yet,” Gabe says, laughing awkwardly. “Sorry.”

“Any chance you can keep him from fighting everyone in his path?” Peggy asks, casually leaning against Gabe in a way that suggests they _have_ talked about their relationship. A ring glints from her finger, from his too. They have apparently talked about it a hell of a lot.

“You’re one to talk,” Jim mutters, and Peggy looks offended for one brief moment before she bursts into laughter.

“I had that coming.”

“Let’s be honest,” Sam says. “The day anyone in this band backs down from a fight is the day the East River becomes potable drinking water.”

More laughter, Gabe reaching around to clink his can of PBR against Sam’s.

It’s easy after that. Bucky falls into them like he has always been there, sliding onto the sole abandoned chair and letting Steve sit in his lap even though his bones dig into Bucky’s thighs. He wraps an arm around Steve’s waist, accepts a free, if somewhat warm, beer. He laughs when he gets the jokes, smiles indulgently when he doesn’t, because they aren’t excluding him on purpose. He is just the newcomer in a group that has been around for a long time.

“So Bucky, what do you do?” Peggy asks.

“Oh, I’m in grad school. Chemical engineering.”

“No shit.” Sam points to himself. “Mechanical. Graduated in the spring.”

“God, what a nerd,” Bucky says. “Build anything cool lately?”

“Wings. But I’d have to jump off a roof to try them, so they’re a prototype until I figure that bit out.”

Bucky snorts into his beer. “Good call.”

“What do you wanna do?” Steve asks.

“Something to stop the slow march of planetary destruction, I guess,” Bucky says. “Maybe I help fix something outright. Maybe I just help make things that replace things that cause harm—plastics that don’t last a thousand years or something. I don’t know.”

“And here I just wanna make art,” Steve says.

“Hey.” Bucky squeezes his arm. “Art can be a weapon. Besides, we fucking need it to survive.”

A man with ochre skin leans around the door frame, a spiked silver bar glinting from his septum. “Lost Video Tapes is wrapping up. River of Truth, you’re next.”

Bucky’s thighs breathe a sigh of relief when Steve stands up, but the rest of him feels cold without him. He warms fast enough though when he slips into the crowd, weaving until he finds the people who are truly married to their spots, unyielding as stone.

It’s a good set, the energy pulsing through the audience, sending people flying like so many celestial bodies smashing into one another throughout the cosmos. Bucky watches it, lets himself fall to the edge of the circle pit, his eyes locked on Steve where he’s playing with an energy that transcends anything Bucky has seen before. Or at least it feels that way, every swing of his drumsticks echoing through his whole body.

Transfixed. That’s what this is. Bucky is transfixed, his mouth dry and his body hot. He shoves weakly at the moshers, upholding his part in the social contract but nothing more. Then Steve starts looking for him, his eyes squinting against the stage lights and scanning.

He stands up while Gabe plays the keyboard intro to one of their songs, takes a puff off his inhaler, then slowly peels the tank top up over his head. A quick shake sends sweat flying off his hair. Bucky wets his lips and wonders if Steve has spotted him when Steve leans over the set, his eyes burning into Bucky’s soul, his sticks working a slow beat on one of the cymbals.

“Christ, Stevie,” Bucky says, his voice lost in the din, his body thrumming and begging.

And then the song starts up proper and Steve has no choice but to look away, though he finds Bucky again and again before the set is done, sending his heart and belly into a frenzy every time.

After, it’s a nightmare waiting for the crowd to thin around the merch table. Steve stands there with damp hair, signing posters and CDs, taking the occasional photo and talking to too many people. Why are there so many people?

Bucky watches from far away, leaning on a support column and sipping a beer because he doesn’t know what else to do with himself. When the crowd finally dies out, Steve finds him so fast it’s obvious he always knew where Bucky was. He slides a tee shirt into Bucky’s hand and pulls him down for a kiss that is probably a little too much for public, but there’s another band playing and there are so few witnesses that Bucky can’t be fucked to care.

“I can’t leave,” Steve breathes against his lips. “Until after.”

“Okay.”

“I didn’t think this through when I was eyefucking you up there.”

“Okay.” Bucky swallows. Steve presses his face against Bucky’s chest. The air between them is humid with body heat and sweat, and Bucky wants to make it worse. He wants to writhe against Steve until the entire world feels like those few years he spent in Texas, the air so thick that breathing almost felt like drowning. “But you’ll come home with me after?”

Steve answers him with another kiss, his teeth dragging roughly across Bucky’s bottom lip, his hand sliding into one of Bucky’s back pockets—a motion that feels so secret for how it’s hidden by the support column behind them.

“Come on,” Bucky says, and he drags Steve to the back of the crowd and laces their fingers into knots. They watch the last two bands together, and Bucky finds another column to hold up while Steve and the others go through another round of talking and signing and pictures and talking. He helps them pack up after that, loading up a van out front.

“Can we get a ride to Bucky’s?” Steve asks. Jim smirks, Gabe raises an eyebrow, and Peggy smiles warmly. In the driver’s seat, Sam just shrugs.

“Climb in.” Steve jerks his head at the inside of the van, which is how Bucky finds himself stuffed into the spaces between equipment, a guitar case halfway in his lap, Steve all the way in his lap. He can’t help the kiss he puts on the nape of Steve’s neck. He forces himself to behave otherwise while the van rattles along toward his building.

Steve’s mouth is on his the second the door shuts behind them, hot and insistent in the foyer where he shoves Bucky up against the glass door that leads back to the street.

“Steve.” Bucky pushes him away with a quiet laugh. “We gotta…upstairs.”

There are too many stairs. There are so many stairs and why isn’t there an elevator and why are they still walking up fucking stairs?

Bucky’s key slips away from the lock, Steve’s arms a distracting weight around his waist, Steve’s mouth an even more distracting weight where it’s wet and nipping at his neck. When they tumble inside, Bucky’s glad for his small, weird studio where the bed is so close. They dive into it together, Steve climbing on top of him.

Eager, Steve licks hot into his mouth, his hands rucking up Bucky’s shirt and feeling along his rib cage. Bucky’s thighs bracket Steve’s hips, Steve’s body rolling insistently against him. They’re both undeniably hard. There’s no hiding it, not in jeans that tight, not with both of them grinding into each other with increasing insistence.

“I need…” Steve snaps his fingers and then frowns.

“What?”

“We’re so dressed, Buck. So dressed.” But he keeps kissing him, keeps sliding his tongue across Bucky’s like it’s the only thing in the world worth doing. Bucky has the easier first move, so he takes it, sliding his pawn across the board. He grips the bottom of Steve’s tank top and works it up over his skin, revealing all the ink underneath and the metal barbells going through Steve’s nipples.

He could…

Bucky’s mouth finds stainless steel, his tongue flicking across the tiny pink nub that encircles it. Above him, Steve sighs delicately, and Bucky’s cock twitches in his skinnies. He wants to hear it again, his mouth trailing saliva across Steve’s chest to lick at the other side. Steve doesn’t sigh though. This time, he growls, playfully shoving Bucky back onto his mattress and shifting so he can rip Bucky’s tee off over his head. Bucky has exactly one tattoo, black ink splashed across his rib cage to spell the words, “Never let them see you bleed.”

Steve’s tongue finds it and drags along every single letter, every drop of faux ink splatter. His mouth moves to Bucky’s nipples next, nipping at them, and then Bucky gets it. Steve fucks like he fights, like he drums, like he lives—relentless and frenzied.

Above him, Steve moves his body down the bed, his lips moving lower down Bucky’s torso. It’s a relief when Steve undoes his jeans, when he grabs them and helps Bucky shimmy them down his hips. With Bucky exposed to him, Steve’s tongue gives him a tentative flick. Testing the waters, getting a taste. Bucky props himself up on his elbows to watch, to see the way the soft pink muscle darts out between Steve’s lips to lick, to tease, to lave up the underside and slide into the slit.

Bucky’s breath has stopped in his lungs, occasionally hitching when his body reminds him that he still needs oxygen. Steve’s blue eyes find him and lock onto his gaze. He doesn’t look away until his nose hits the curls at the base of Bucky’s cock, the rest of it buried in Steve’s mouth so deep that reality shatters.

“Christ.”

Steve answers him with a hum that zings up his vertebrae, like a hand sliding swiftly down the keys of a piano. Transfixed for a second time that night, Bucky watches Steve’s lips slide up then back down, up then back down. He watches until his head falls back, the ceiling blurring out, his mouth open wide like he’s calling to some heavenly deity but can’t remember the words he means to pray.

Steve keeps sucking him, bobbing and licking while drool pools in Bucky’s curls. When he stops, Bucky whimpers, but it’s only for a moment, just long enough to untie and loosen Bucky’s shoes, to tug Bucky’s jeans and underwear the rest of the way off until he’s laid bare, all of him there for Steve to devour with his eyes and his body however he pleases.

“Have me,” Bucky says, and Steve groans in the process of abandoning his own clothes. He’s beautiful, tattoos sitting low on his hip bones and trailing down his thighs. Bucky wants to taste every single one, wants to memorize the shape of Steve’s body with his mouth.

But something tells him that he’ll have time. That there will be so much time.

And then Steve takes him back into his mouth—so hot, so wet—and Bucky doesn’t think much of anything besides that he hopes it never ends, his body reveling in each sweet touch.

“Can I?” Steve asks, and Bucky almost blurts out a “yes” before he even understands the question, but Steve’s got a wet finger against him, gently circling his hole.

“Please,” Bucky says, his voice cracking down the middle like a tree struck by lightning.

Mouth still working him in deliberate strokes, Steve slowly slides a finger in, finding Bucky’s prostate and pressing against it. Firm circles, a massage that heightens the volume of Steve’s mouth on him, turning the amplifier to dangerous levels that shake the walls of the universe. Existence frays at the seams, Bucky’s gasping moans deepening and rumbling in his chest. It’s good. It’s so good and it’s so much and he’s—

“Gonna come,” Bucky says, half moaning, half choking.

With his free hand, Steve pets his hip bone, writing his permission there. Bucky takes it, letting go, pulsing hot into Steve’s mouth, his fingers tangled in blond hair.

Steve wipes his lips with the back of his wrist and plants a line of tender kisses on Bucky’s hip.

“Come here,” Bucky gasps, and so Steve does, their limbs tangling together again. Bucky can taste himself on Steve’s tongue, and Steve’s cock streaks dampness across his thigh, hard and wanting. Bucky finds it with his hand, stroking it lazily while they kiss, eating up every little sigh and moan he pulls out of Steve’s chest until Bucky has come down enough to think straight.

“Tell me what to do,” Bucky breathes, laying a part of himself at Steve’s feet. Steve could take advantage. Steve could scowl at the implication. Steve could just plain not get it—it wouldn’t be the first time someone didn’t. Not that Bucky can’t have plain vanilla sex and enjoy it. He can. And if that’s all Steve wanted, he would never ask again because he’d rather have Steve than not.

But Steve picks up this thing that Bucky has given him, the corners of his lips curling.

“Kneel on the floor and open your mouth,” Steve says, and Bucky’s blood vibrates through his veins and capillaries. He slips onto thin carpet that will surely burn his knees the second he moves. He lets his lips hang open.

“Wider,” Steve said, sitting on the edge of Bucky’s bed and taking him by the chin. Bucky does as he’s told, his body already threatening to go for another round. It threatens harder when Steve spits directly into his mouth, saliva sliding down Bucky’s tongue.

“Come on, Buck, you know what to do. You’re a good boy, aren’t you?”

Steve’s cock is right there, hard and so big for such a small body.

“There you go. Put your mouth on me.”

Bucky lets his lips fold around Steve’s foreskin. Steve puts an insistent hand on the back of his skull. “All the way down. You can choke on it, can’t you?”

Someone would think Bucky was coming all over again from the moan that comes out of his mouth. He takes Steve, all the way until his upper body flinches against the intrusion. Again and again, until his eyes water and leak tears down his cheeks.

“You’d tell me if you didn’t want something, right? You’re good like that?”

Bucky grabs Steve’s hand and squeezes, doing his best to nod, still sucking, still choking on the length of him. Steve squeezes back, sighing, moaning, his hips occasionally jerking up off the mattress. When Bucky pulls off, there’s a line of drool between his lips and Steve’s cock, stretching like the wires of a suspension bridge.

“Fuck my mouth,” Bucky begs. “Please, Stevie, I want…”

Steve reaches out, tangles both hands in Bucky’s hair and jerks his face back onto him. His hips snap up off the bed, again and again, thrusting between Bucky’s lips. Bucky slams his hands down on either side of Steve, grabbing fistfuls of sheets and comforter. More tears run down his cheeks. Steve pulls his face away and lets him get in a few gasping breaths.

“Bucky, do you know how pretty you are?” Steve asks, and Bucky wants to kiss him. Bucky wants to—

Steve’s in his mouth again, thrusting across his tongue, leaving trails of salty, bitter pre-come. His scent hangs heavy in Bucky’s nose, blond curls tickling him. He could love this man. He could. He sees them sprawled on a green room couch, casually leaning into each other. He sees rings on their fingers.

It might not happen. It would be a long way off in the future if it ever did. But he can feel the possibility stretching on like a highway. The destination is there if they manage to travel far enough without the car breaking down or the gas money running out.

He wants to laugh. Who realizes someone has forever potential in the middle of getting their face fucked?

But it’s not that. It’s that he was—despite his nervousness—comfortable enough to ask. Sure in the knowledge that even if Steve wasn’t into it, he wouldn’t judge. And it’s that Steve _can_ give him this, that he doesn’t have to deny this side of himself.

It’s that Steve has things he gives a shit about. It’s that Bucky so badly wants to be one of those things, that Bucky _is_ one of those things, and Bucky knows what that means because he’s seen Steve’s passion firsthand in flying fists and flying sticks.

“Bucky, I’m gonna come down your throat. That okay with you?”

Steve tugs his face away and Bucky swallows air like he’s gone days without breathing.

“Yes. Can I…” Bucky looks down between his legs, his cock hard again. He pulls one hand free of the bedsheets, flexing his fingers and reaching down. Steve doesn’t say anything. He just watches him stroke root to tip, eating up the visuals like they’re all the sustenance he has ever needed.

“Yeah, Buck,” he says hoarsely. “Go ahead.” He tangles nimble fingers in Bucky’s hair again, pulling Bucky’s mouth back onto him, forcing him to bob up and down his length over and over, Bucky’s moans muffled against the intrusion.

Steve comes with a quiet cry, the sound going straight to Bucky’s dick. As promised, Steve buries himself in Bucky’s throat. He only tastes Steve near the end, when he’s overcome by the need to breathe and pushes Steve away, come washing over his tongue and splashing onto his lips and cheeks.

“Keep going,” Steve pants, thumbs swiping at the spillage and dipping it back into Bucky’s mouth. Bucky comes, moaning and sucking on one of Steve’s thumbs while he twitches his release onto the floor.

It’s Steve who pulls him toward the bathroom and into the shower where warm water sluices away the sweat of the show and the sex. It’s Steve who gets on the floor with a wet cloth and cleans up Bucky’s mess.

“You don’t have to do that,” Bucky says. “I can get it.”

“Shh. Lay down. I’ll be there in a minute.”

Bucky crawls into the bed, the sheets still a bit damp, but there’s nothing to be done for it. As promised, Steve joins him not long after, petting Bucky’s wet hair, its strands starting to kink as they dry.

“You have curly hair,” Steve says.

“I stole my sister’s straightener when I left for college. She didn’t talk to me for six weeks.”

“You should let it curl sometimes.” Steve wraps a strand around his finger. The lamp on the desk is still on, and Bucky looks at them in the mirror, Steve’s pale back and even more tattoos reflected in the glass.

“You…” Bucky’s fingertips trace down a pink scar that runs the length of Steve’s back. Tattoos crisscross it but Steve clearly hasn’t intentionally tried to cover it up. “Scoliosis?”

“Yeah.”

Bucky hums and traces it again, letting his eyes close.

“So,” Steve says, and Bucky blinks out of that strange liminal space between consciousness and not. “Are we a thing now? Just in case it comes up again.”

He smiles and brushes his lips across Steve’s forehead.

“Yeah, Steve. I think so.”

In the morning, the sex is more tender, full of kissing and rocking into each others’ hands.

They spend the rest of the day washing Bucky’s bedding, eating take out, and sprawling on the clean sheets where they kiss and talk over music spilling low from the CD player.

* * *

“G _onna hate myself for asking this, but what does he look like?”_ Becca texts him on Sunday. Steve has another show that night, which meant that he unfortunately had to go. The show is also over in fucking Jersey, and Bucky likes him a whole lot but he has class early on Mondays.

Bucky curses himself for not thinking to take a single pic of them together, but he’ll get one soon enough.

“ _Myspace.com/_ _R_ _iver_ _O_ _f_ _T_ _ruth_ _B_ _kln The blond one.”_

“ _Important Q. Can he make gingerbread?”_

Bucky figures that’s as close to, “I’m happy for you,” as he’s gonna get for now.

“ _I’ll cut your one remaining Christmas cookie in half if you harass my boyfriend.”_

“ _Way harsh,_ _Bonko._ ”

* * *

They’re on the Amtrak to Ohio and Steve has his feet in Bucky’s lap, his back resting against a pillow shoved up against the window.

“And you don’t do Black Friday either?” Steve asks.

“No. We do put the tree up, but that’s just because Becca and I are both home.”

“I love your family and demand to be adopted.”

Bucky laughs and squeezes his calf. They’re quiet for a while after that, a splitter running from Steve’s Zune to two pairs of headphones. Steve has the newestThrice playing, and Bucky is trying to wrap his head around how a song can so perfectly invoke fire or water.

“Hey Steve.”

“Yeah?” Steve hits pause before the next song can begin.

“Have you ever been to Ohio before?”

Outside, the scenery whirs by in streaks of blue and green.

“No, this is my first time ever leaving New York, unless you count Jersey,” Steve says.

“No one counts Jersey.”

“Why?”

Bucky moves his gaze away from the window and onto Steve. He has on one of Bucky’s hoodies, charcoal gray swamping his small frame. When Bucky meets his eyes, he finds a soft smile waiting for him, Steve’s face warm and tender.

Lacing their fingers together, Bucky skates a thumb over a scab on one of Steve's knuckles and shrugs. “Doesn’t matter.”

**Author's Note:**

> Were you a Converse scene kid or a Vans scene kid? 
> 
> [Here are](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/94/ee/d6/94eed6c42ebeb861b370fc8c64da51fc.jpg) some [important visual references](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D8pYUK-WsAgVdWI.jpg). 
> 
> The bands mentioned in this story are mentioned because of the time period/setting and aren't necessarily endorsements. 
> 
> That said, 10/10 recommend the two newest Thrice albums.
> 
> If you liked this, you might enjoy [The Taste of Ink](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24323176). It features punk Steve and barista Bucky. Yes, I am apparently on a sole mission to make Drummer Steve happen.


End file.
